Under the Edge of Night

Odes and elegies set in Prussia, Lithuania, and on the killing fields of the Eastern Front during World War II. These are war wounds in poetic form, bringing buried history and oppression powerfully into the light.

Often compared to the poetry of Paul Celan and Nelly Sachs, the postwar verse of Johannes Bobrowski is set in the East Prussian and Lithuanian landscapes of his childhood, and in the killing fields he witnessed as a young German soldier on the eastern front during World War I. Bob...